


Ruined with Ash, Forged of Hope

by Cas_203



Series: Ashes to Ashes, Burned our Hearts to the Ground [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Also Loki Deserved Better, Also Scarlett Witch needs More recognition but she isn’t in this, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone deserves better, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Give Tom Holland an Oscar, Peter Parker Deserved Better, Peter Parker Feels, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter-centric, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sorry Not Sorry, Speculation, Spoilers, That Scene™, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and theories, so many spoilers, there will be tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 05:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14538183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cas_203/pseuds/Cas_203
Summary: (MAJOR SPOILERS: PROCEED WITH CAUTION)——————————————-He knows it’s cruel to plead.A boy, still- despite his foolish eagerness to prove otherwise- he does so anyways.





	Ruined with Ash, Forged of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this two hours after watching the film a few days ago, and I was in a state. I needed to bring some hope, so this fix-it was born.
> 
> Hopefully, I did these characters and these people justice.

 

 _Aunt May sobbing, black dress and poised hands curled in a too-used tissue_ and Peter doesn’t want to die, _Ned, guy in the chair and best friend since third grade watching Star Wars with the couch empty next to him_ and Peter doesn’t want to die, _MJ, indifference a mask and her pretty, pretty mind an undiscovered lagoon_ and Peter doesn’t want to die, _a funeral, his body in a casket and his mind nothing- him, nothing, no thoughts and no existence and no being_ and Peter doesn’t want to die.

He knows it’s cruel to plead.

A boy, still, despite his foolish eagerness to prove otherwise, he does so anyway.

 _‘I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go, Mister Stark, please, please,’_ And he can feel things, his heart beating faster and Tony Stark’s grip on his back acting as the biggest comfort and he thinks if he pleads enough maybe he’ll listen, maybe something will happen and he’ll be okay.

Maybe he won’t die- he doesn’t want to die, _‘Please, Mr. Stark,’_

After his _‘You’re okay,’_ Mr. Stark has said nothing except just grip him tight (an anchor), but Peter wants to take the moment and turn it into infinity, because he knows what’s coming next. His legs give out and he falls and Mr. Stark’s _still there_ and Peter _**still** doesn’t want to die_ , doesn’t want the images his brain conjured up to turn into reality. No, Peter wants to graduate and go to college and maybe kiss a girl; he wants to get drunk and make bad decisions and wants to get a hug from his Aunt that lets him know she forgives him anyways; he wants to get to a point where he maybe calls Mr. Stark just Tony and has the other Avengers on speed dial and they congregate for family dinners and he’s-

 _‘I’m sorry.’_ The two words slip out of him with everything but ease and Peter knows he can’t fight it anymore, that even boys with radioactive spider bites can’t defeat everything, yet he still tries. Somehow, he tries to keep the pieces of him floating away close but it doesn’t work, and he’s breaking and he’s leaving until he’s lost.

It doesn’t feel like nothing- Peter had never thought death would.

It feels... empty. Like he had been forgotten in an instant, like all the lights keeping the closet-monsters at bay had been switched off but the monsters still stayed hidden- it feels _sad_ in a way he could never have imagined, and it feels _final_ in a way he doesn’t want to explore. His body is broken _(pain ripping through every particle for a flash of a second),_ he’ssomewhere and nowhere, but his mind is still with him.

For a moment, his thoughts and feelings cease, and he just is. For the next, he screams, his surroundings shatter, and he knows he didn’t die- no, he was erased in every way possible.

Peter feels the realisation hit him, and knows that if he had tears to cry his sobs would never cease. _No one mourns me; there’s no one left to mourn._ The thought of never having been someone somehow seems worse than having been someone who died _(pathetically, burdening an already too-burdened mind by childish pleas and he’s **sorry** , burning with regret and things never said)._

For quite some time- an amount of time indescribable, maybe because time didn’t exist in the place where his consciousness drifted or maybe because he no longer had the ability to accurately tell it- he mourns the loss of himself. Did May have holes in her memory, blanks in the family picture book his face had dominated? Did Ned have a new best friend, MJ another kid to tease? Did Mr. Stark-

A flicker, of something. A sliver of hope, thrust into his mind with the ferocity of a lion as if death wanted him to rejoice. A light, and Peter realises that all this time, he’s been floating outside space and outside time.

A place where you could, theoretically, be pulled back from.

He’s still still there, in a sense, still seventeen and a boy and scared, but he smiles.

Tony Stark remembered, and would stop at nothing to bring him back.

 

 

_**When Tony Stark returns to Earth, it goes something like this:** _

_**Steve Rogers leaves his temporary bedroom in the Avengers Tower for the first time only when FRIDAY announces Stark’s arrival, and there follows a teary reunion filled with uncharacteristic apologies tainted with the news of numerous deaths. Pepper Potts slaps him, and then kisses him.** _

_**Rhodey, as usual, watches on and smiles.** _

_**  
Tony Stark offers Thor- still broken and angered from his loss- permanent residence in the Avenger’s headquarters. Thor accepts and, after receiving countless strange, oddly realistic and painful dreams, throws himself into research about frost giants and resurrections in the form of a child.** _

_**Bruce, Steve and Natasha come to stay in the new Tower as well, hearts duct-taped together but minds as resilient as ever:** _

_**They have work to do.** _

_**Tony spends five days mourning Peter Parker, and realises after six that he hasn’t gotten any calls- that no S.H.I.E.L.D members are on his ass, no civilians patriotically mourning the loss of America’s Greatest Heroes.**_

_**That’s when he realises half the planet’s been wiped.** _

_**He goes to Wakanda to meet Shuri, and spends the whole week there seeing Peter Parker in her every word. Tony offers his condolences for T’Challa, thanks her for opening their country’s doors for a war they didn’t have to get involved in, and says that she has him at her disposal.** _

_**Shuri says that honor should have gone to her brother, and convinces Tony to let her help with whatever the Avengers were planning next (he hadn’t wanted to get another kid involved, not after...).** _

_**Four weeks and a half after his return to Earth, after countless hours of research and coffee, Tony tells everyone to get their suits on.** _

_**Shuri, the little genius, still mourning her brother and people, had found a way to the infinity stones; the Avengers, his family? They were going to change fate, and they were going to bring their loved ones  home.** _

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Infinity War was amazing- to see this journey I’ve witnessed since I was five years old (and the first Iron Man came out) come full circle, to witness it and be able to say that I was there, that I know these people and that I’ve grown up- I’m growing up- watching them and seen it come to here? It’s an inexplicable feeling.
> 
> That’s why it broke me as much as it captured my heart. 
> 
> These characters aren’t- and never were- invincible, and I think that’s the whole point. That’s the reason we love them; they’re superheroes, and yet they still have panic attacks and insecurities and trust issues and they still bleed and they still die, they’re still human. It’s why these guys mean so much to me.
> 
> Even the biggest heroes aren’t perfect, and Marvel taught me that.
> 
> I hope you realise it, too.
> 
> I’d love to hear what you guys think- let me know if I did these characters justice (I tried my damnest), what you thought overall, if you wanna scream at me, and whether you aren’t prepared (like me) to wait a whole freaking year until the second part of Infinty War.


End file.
